U.S. Wants South, Japan in N.Korea Talks

BRUCE DUNFORD

Published 8:00 pm, Thursday, June 12, 2003

Associated Press Writer

The United States agreed Friday that participation by South Korea and Japan "is indispensable" in talks to end North Korea's nuclear weapons program, sending a strong signal to the North that it cannot rely solely on the Americans to make a deal.

At the same time, the three countries promised to seek a peaceful end to the North Korean nuclear program.

U.S., Japanese and South Korean diplomats issued a joint statement declaring their intention to work together at the conclusion of two days of talks of the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group.

Meeting were James Kelly, assistant U.S. secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Lee Soo-hyuck, South Korea's deputy foreign minister; and Mitoji Yabunaka, director general of Japan's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.

The delegations referred to April 23-25 talks held in Beijing with China, the United States and North Korea and agreed "on the necessity of multilateral talks expanded to include other interested parties."

It was the first meeting of the three-nation group since the end of major fighting in the Iraq war, which raised concern among the North Koreans that the United States might be planning to attack the communist nation next.

Secretary of State Colin Powell gave assurances in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursdsay that "we will not be frightened into taking action that would not be appropriate."

The closed-door meetings at the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort on Waikiki Beach reached the same conclusion. The meetings were part of a series of talks held about four times each year.

"We're all committed to the resolution in a peaceful way of the nuclear problem of North Korea, and we all seek a complete and verifiable and irreversible end to their nuclear weapons program," Kelly said as he left the final meeting.

"We're all committed to do that in a peaceful means with dialogue," he said. "We went through the details of how to get there."

He declined to elaborate on what steps would be taken or what other issues were discussed.

Yabunaka told Japanese reporters that the delegations want "to send a clear message to North Korea" that it needs to end its nuclear weapons program to prevent further deterioration of the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

Tensions have been mounting in the region since last October when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted it had been covertly developing nuclear weapons.

At the Beijing talks, the first high-level contact between Washington and Pyongyang since the standoff began, North Korea indicated it might surrender its nuclear program in exchange for economic benefits and security guarantees.

Diplomats from Japan and South Korea have been sidelined from negotiations as North Korea insisted on dealing directly with the United States.

Last week, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun called for their nations to be included in talks to defuse the nuclear standoff, calling it "a serious threat" to regional peace.

Delegates at the Honolulu meeting promised that if North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons program it will "improve its relations with the international community and livelihood of its people," according to the joint statement.

The three delegations "expressed concern about illegal activities by North Korean entities, including drug running and counterfeiting," and discussed cooperation to stop them, it said.

No mention was made of whether the delegates discussed any changes to the U.S.-led project to build two nuclear reactors in North Korea.

The light-water reactors are part of a 1994 agreement in the efforts to keep the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons by replacing the North's graphite-moderated reactors, which experts say produce greater amounts of weapons-grade plutonium.

Under the agreement, North Korea agreed to freeze its then-suspected nuclear weapons facilities in return for the new reactors to generate the electricity needed to grow the country's economy.